BRAHMS: The Violin Sonatas – Anne-Sophie Mutter, violin/Lambert Orkis, piano – DGG B0014767-02, 68:07 [Distr. by Universal] *****:
Recorded November-December 2009, the complete violin sonatas of Brahms with Anne-Sophie Mutter (b. 1963) capture her at the peak of her form, offering vivid, uncompromisingly fervent readings of these works, which first impressed her when David Oistrakh performed them in Basel in 1968 with Frieda Bauer. Certainly prior readings of the triptych by some greats of the violin have been bequeathed us: Kulenkampff, Francescatti, Oistrakh, Perlman, Da Vito, Kremer, Szigeti, Znaider, and Stern, to name a few. Mutter and her collaborator Lambert Orkis claim to have been working with these sonatas for twenty years, and they project a thorough familiarity with the style, given Mutter’s willful application and withholding of vibrato to dramatize her effects.
When Joseph Szigeti explored these works for CBS and Mercury–with Mieczyslaw Horszowski–he left extensive program notes on the vagaries of the Brahms style and the degree of discretion left to the practitioner regarding tempo, dynamics, and bow pressure and articulation. Mutter and Orkis open with the 1886 A Major “Thun” Sonata, whose melodic kernel has been attributed to Walther’s Prize Song from Wagner’s Die Meistersinger. Whatever “detachment” emanates from Mutter’s sec vibrato, she compensates for by way of passionate entries and canny adjustments to the rising or weaving melodic line, enhanced by Orkis’ splendid keyboard dynamics. The high notes of the Andante tranquillo–again in almost static motion without vibrato–assume an eerie purity that one must concede has its own beauty. Perhaps the Szigeti model–his own cat-gut approach of singularly nasal character–motivates Mutter’s attempt to create a chiseled classicism that counters the innate passion in the Brahms canon.
The two outer sonatas–the G Major of 1879 and the D Minor of 1886–each relate to some deeply personal element in the composer’s nature, such as the “Regenlied,” Op. 59, No. 3 for the G Major Sonata. The first movement often becomes a melancholy waltz, with violin part in pizzicato over the G Major arpeggios in the keyboard. Mutter’s technique in the double stops and the razor-like, waspish attacks proves acerbic and haunted at once, emblematic of the composer’s deep passion and his simultaneous mistrust of emotion in general. The Adagio proceeds as a lovely song, but it projects a martial or dirge-like quality as well, a somber acknowledgment of mortality. That same intimation of death touches the last movement, but the whole aura has softened into burnished autumn, at least when Mutter permits her Stradivarius its natural colors, as in the last pages, when she allows some warmth to the ardent interplay of figures.
The D Minor might have Mutter’s singing rapturously in spite of herself, when we must balance the convulsive elements in the music against Mutter’s dynamic and color restraint. The effect blends chastity and emotional vehemence in quite a febrile style I find compelling, rather like Lipatti’s way with Chopin. The essentially Lydian character of the Adagio gains a somber intimacy in Mutter’s dialogue with Orkis, the vibrato issue aside. The F-sharp Minor Scherzino overcomes the demure in Mutter’s plying and waxes eloquent, especially as the keyboard part comes into its own while Mutter plays melodic fragments or pizzicato. The symphonic writing of the last movement throbs, waxes, and ebbs in the course of an often demonic tarantella, and both principals thrust themselves into the maelstrom. Whatever idiosyncracies mark the Mutter temperament and style, her virtuosity more than compensates for her mannerisms, and we receive great Brahms, blistering and controversial at once.
— Gary Lemco
